Fallen Roses
by golden chain
Summary: An alternate ending to the film. Contains violence.


Lester picked up the framed picture of his family and felt an overwhelming surge of happiness flow through him. He couldn't explain it. Didn't know the source of it.

"Man, oh, man." He muttered.

The front door opened, and after what seemed like an interminable amount of time, closed. He heard footsteps, the sound of wet heels clicking against hardwood.

"Carolyn?" He called out, putting down the picture.

He heard her voice in the shadows before he saw her.

"I will not be a victim, Lester."

Lester had no idea what this meant. He felt something, a twinge of fear cut through his euphoria.

"What?" He asked.

She stepped into the kitchen. Her hair was plastered to her head with rain water. Her dress was soaked dark red from the rain. In front of her, held in both hands, was a chrome plated automatic pistol.

"Carolyn, what are you doing with that?" Lester asked, his breath catching in his throat. He was afarid. He stood up from his chair and stumbled back involuntarily, bumping into the table. The picture he'd been admiring fell to the floor. The sound of the glass shattering was lost in the sound of rain thrashing against the roof.

"Shut up, Lester." Carolyn said. She raised the pistol slowly. The pistol barrel stared back at Lester like a dead eye. "I will not be a victim." She reapeated.  
"What are you talking about?" He asked.

"You've been... you've been laughing at me." Carolyn choked out.

"That's crazy...I love you..." Lester sputtered. His brain was madly trying to figure out a way out of this sitation.

"YOU LIE!" She screamed. Lester stumbled back a bit further, never taking his eyes away from the barrel of the gun.

They were interrupted by the sound of a door opening and closing. They both looked over to see Angela, her make-up re-applied, step into the kitchen. She stopped dead in her tracks.

For a moment, no one moved. They each stood still as statues. Then Angela screamed.   
Carolyn was so surprised she pulled the trigger on the pistol. The bullet missed Lester, instead hitting the vase on the table with the American Beauty roses in it. The vase exploded. Water, colored red by the rose petals, stained the table cloth. Lester snapped out of it and leapt forward. He grabbed the pistol by the barrel, despite it being white-hot from the shot just fired. Carolyn screamed as she and Lester struggled for the pistol. Out of desperation, she thrust her leg forward, her foot catching Lester cleanly between his legs. He stumbled back, the sickly feeling that taking a shot in the pills will give you rushing to his stomach. Carolyn saw Lester stumble back and fired twice. Angela screamed again.

The two rounds found their mark in Lester's chest, the first one entering his right lung and exiting out his upper back just below the shoulder. The second smashed through his ribs and punched through his heart. He let out a gasp of pain as an intense heat shot through him. He stumbled, trying to catch his balance on the table. Instead he just pulled off the tablecloth and collapsed against the cupboards behind him.

Carolyn dropped the pistol. It fell right beside the three spent shells, skeletal remains of the rounds that she'd just fired.

Lester tried to sit up but found it to be an impossibility, smears of blood, as red as the roses on the floor, bloomed against his white shirt. It was hard to breathe. Everytime he exhaled a fine mist of blood escaped his injured lungs. Blood stained the white floor.

"Oh, my god!" Angela shrieked. She ran out of the living room and out of the house, into the rain, without the slightest notion of where she was going.

Carolyn slowly fell against the counter and slumped down against the cupboards. She hadn't wanted this to happen...

Lester felt his body going numb and cold. He was dying, and he knew it. It didn't seem to bother him. He looked at Carolyn, across the kitchen, looking scared and hurt. He felt sorry for her. He hadn't meant for any of this to happen. He tried to smile, then, even through the pain and numbness, uttered his final words:

"I love you."

Carolyn barely heard these words, but somewhere deep inside her brain, they registered.

Lester was no longer breathing or moving. He was dead. She couldn't scream, couldn't cry, just sit there and look at her dead husband, at his blood covered lips, lips she had kissed so many times...

She sat like that for a long time. By the time the poilce and paramedics, called by Ricky and a hysterical Jane, arrived, she realized a single tear had left her eye and was now rolling down her cheek.


End file.
